If you are like me, designing games is an enjoyable activity, or at least preferable to doing your taxes (somewhere on Accounting subreddit, a user is cursing my name). I started a game company to design games.

The whole initiative to publish came out of a desire to control all elements of game design. Like most designers looking to self-publish, you will find that you spend a lot less time designing games and a lot more time pouring on all the factors that go into turning an idea into a physical product. Some of these factors include but are not limited to: marketing, manufacturing, collaboration with artists, taxes and banging my head against a wall trying to learn Excel.

Me + Excel

From a personal development standpoint, deciding to self-publish is the right decision. From an enjoyment at creating games standpoint, I find myself going obscene lengths of time without working on game designs.

The trouble is that while going through all the trouble of launching a game, you find yourself having become disconnected from the game design community because…well you haven’t designed games in a while. Your creative edge when it comes to game design has become blunt.

I eventually stumbled across a solution that effectively maintains my abilities as a game designer while still respecting the time limitations I am under.

The solution is the 24 hour game design challenge. The challenge is simple: create a game in 24 hours. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it has to be playable and the first draft of the rules need to be complete.

There are numerous game design sites hosting challenges with real prizes if you are inclined to share your ideas. Sites such as Board Game Geek post monthly 24 hour contests and The Game Crafter has a variety of design contests as well. You even stand to win a prize to boot, so why not give it a shot?

The 24 hour contest is important not only because it forces you to work quickly and avoid the humming and hawing of game design, but through thematic restrictions that are frequently incorporated into the challenges as well. Stipulating that must design a game with a Gothic theme for example can push you out of your farming (in my case) comfort zone and require that I design in a totally new way.

You can add an additional level of challenge through an idea generator like Boardgamizer. The device is great and throws a theme, mechanic, and victory condition at you along with an option constraint that forces you to design in all sorts of crazy ways.

Try out one of the above 24 hour challenges, dedicate a few hours (or a sleepless night) to pounding out a game. Whether the game is terrific or terrible is irrelevant, the point is that we are flexing our game design muscles, which is why we got into this industry in the first place.